10024

Zohorecruit; Chicago (IL); Remote; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Zohorecruit is seeking a Principal Digital Architect in a 12+ months contract to lead end-to-end architecture for AI-related projects. The role involves daily communication with business owners and architecture teams across the US, with priority for Chicago or Peoria residency if preferred, and remote work options.

Responsibilities include setting architectural standards, guiding distributed systems, and mentoring engineers to ensure scalable, secure, and cost-efficient solutions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree with 5+ years’ experience in this capacity.
• Experience defining AI reference architectures for enterprise adoption.
• Ability to explain and defend architectural trade-offs between ML, LLM approaches, and non-AI solutions.
• Proven experience taking AI systems from proof of concept to production.

Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end architecture for complex systems balancing scalability, performance, security, and rapid delivery.
• Define solution and platform architectures for large scale distributed systems.
• Create architectures meeting standards for scalability, performance, resilience and security.
• Provide architectural guidance and mentorship to engineering teams.
• Ensure solutions meet security, compliance, and regulatory requirements.

Skills

Architectural Thinking

Technical Leadership

Communication

Requirements Analysis

Platform & Application Architecture

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Tools

AWS

Docker

Kubernetes

Snowflake

GraphQL

SQL

NoSQL

Job description

Chicago, United States | Posted on 07/02/2026

Location: 100%Remote. If they are residing in the US however, preferred locationisin Chicago, IL or Peoria, IL area.

Duration: 12+months contract

This isArchitecture position for AI related projects which require dailycommunications with business owners and other members of architecture teamlocated in US.

Position’sContributions to Work Group:

• As a Principal Digital Architect, you will ownthe end-to-end architecture solutions for complex systems—balancingscalability, performance, security, and rapid delivery—while influencingEnterprise technology strategy.
• This role requires strong technical depth,architectural judgment, and the ability to translate ambiguous business needsinto durable, scalable solutions.
• Own and define solution and platformarchitectures for large scale, distributed systems from concept throughproduction.
• Create architecture that meets high standardsfor scalability, performance, resilience, and security.
• Partner closely with business leaders, productowners, engineering managers, and delivery teams to ensure architecturalalignment with business outcomes.
• Assess, select, and introduce new technologies,including proof of concept development and architectural spikes.
• Establish and enforce architectural standards,patterns, and best practices across platform teams.
• Provide architectural guidance and mentorship toengineering teams, ensuring high quality implementation.
• Ensure solutions meet security, compliance, andregulatory requirements.
• Produce and maintain clear architecture documentation,including rationale and tradeoffs.
• Continuously evolve platform architecture to improve developer productivity, system reliability, and cost efficiency.

Education& Experience Required:

• Bachelor’s degree with 5+ years’ experience inthis capacity.

RequiredTechnical Skills (Required):

• Architectural Thinking: Ability todecompose complex problem spaces and develop pragmatic architecture optionswith clearly articulated trade offs.
• Technical Leadership: Influence withoutauthority; guide teams through architectural decisions and implementationchallenges.
• Communication: Clearly articulate complextechnical concepts to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Requirements Analysis: Translate businessand non-functional requirements into scalable technical designs.
• Platform & Application Architecture:Strong foundation in designing modern application and platform architecturesusing established patterns and standards.

Considerationfor top candidates:

• Experience defining AI reference architecturesand standards for enterprise adoption.
• Ability to explain and defend architecturaltrade offs between classical ML, LLM based approaches, and non-AI solutions.
• Proven experience taking AI systems from proofof concept to scaled production use.
• Strong programming background in Python andJava, with the ability to reason at code level.
• Hands on experience with cloudnative architectures , including AWS services, containerization, and orchestration(Docker, Kubernetes).
• Deep understanding of dataarchitecture : SQL and NoSQL databases, data warehouses (Snowflakespecifically), data modeling, replication, and sharding.
• Experience with modern DevOps practices: CI/CD,infrastructure as code, observability, and automated testing.
• Strong API design experience (REST, GraphQL,gRPC), including versioning and documentation.
• Ability to evaluate and introduce emergingtechnologies aligned to business goals.

AI RelatedSkills:

• Hands onexperience designing Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) architectures,including:
  • Document preprocessing and chunking strategies.
  • Vectorization and embedding models.
  • Query time retrieval, ranking, and contextassembly.
• Deepunderstanding of embedding techniques, similarity search, and trade offsacross:
  • Chunk size and overlap.
  • Latency vs. recall vs. cost.
  • Experience with vector databases and searchlayers (e.g., managed or self-hosted vector stores) and their integration intoapplication architectures.
  • Experience with Agentic Frameworks.
• Ability toarchitect end to end AI workflows, including:
  • Prompt design and prompt versioning.
  • Context management and memory patterns.
  • Model routing and fallback strategies.
• KnowledgeofLLM lifecycle considerations, including:
  • Evaluation, monitoring, and drift detection.
• Strongunderstanding of AI system non-functional requirements, including:
  • Performance and latency optimization.
  • Cost controls and token efficiency.
  • Security, data privacy, and guardrails
  • Experience integrating AI capabilities intoexisting enterprise platforms via APIs and event driven architectures.
  • Ability to assess, prototype, and productionizeemerging AI technologies aligned to business use cases.
• Consistent job hopping/ choppy tenure.
• If candidate is not local but open to relocationon their dime and being there in office day 1, please make that clear on theresume.

Skill set

AI, ML, LLM, Python, Java, AWS, DevOps, SQL, NoSQL, DevOps, API, Snowflake